Medical robotic systems such as those used in performing minimally invasive surgical procedures offer many benefits over traditional open surgery techniques, including less pain, shorter hospital stays, quicker return to normal activities, minimal scarring, reduced recovery time, and less injury to tissue. Consequently, demand for minimally invasive surgery using medical robotic systems is strong and growing.
One example of a medical robotic system is the daVinci® Surgical System from Intuitive Surgical, Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif. The daVinci® system includes a surgeon's console, a patient-side cart, a high performance 3-D vision system, and Intuitive Surgical's proprietary EndoWristt™ articulating instruments, which are modeled after the human wrist so that when added to the motions of the robotic arm assembly holding the surgical instrument, they allow at least six degrees of freedom of motion, which is comparable to the natural motions of open surgery.
The daVinci® surgeon's console has a high-resolution stereoscopic video display with two progressive scan cathode ray tubes (“CRTs”). The system offers higher fidelity than polarization, shutter eyeglass, or other techniques. Each eye views a separate CRT presenting the left or right eye perspective, through an objective lens and a series of mirrors. The surgeon sits comfortably and looks into this display throughout surgery, making it an ideal place for the surgeon to display and manipulate 3-D intraoperative imagery.
During a surgical procedure, it is generally desirable that the medical robotic system be reliable with an unlikelihood of system failure. Thus, it is desirable to timely perform preventive maintenance before any system failure. In addition, it would be useful to be able to predict when preventive maintenance will be required for field installed systems in order to plan service resource needs as well as service revenues for system manufacturers.
Commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,048,745, the full disclosure of which is incorporated herein by this reference, describes storing tool life data (such as the number of times the tool has been loaded onto a surgical system, the number of surgical procedures performed with the tool, and/or the total time the tool has been used) in a non-volatile memory, wherein an expired tool may provide an indication to the system operator such as a pop-up flag, a color-change spot, or the like, to indicate that the tool is at or near the end of its life.
Although providing a visual end-of-use indication on the tool itself is useful to notify a locally situated assistant or surgeon that a surgical tool should be replaced, it may not serve to readily inform a surgeon who is seated at a surgeon's console some distance away from the tool of such need. Also, in addition to surgical tools which are relatively easy to replace even during a medical procedure, there are many other components of a medical robotic system that require periodic maintenance or replacement, but are not readily removed and replaced during a medical procedure. It would therefore be useful to monitor such components for preventive maintenance needs, and inform the surgeon of any desirable or necessary preventive maintenance before commencement of a medical procedure for patient safety reasons. It would also be useful if monitored usage data is stored and made available for service resource and revenue planning purposes.